[scribus] Free Scribus and FLOSS resource on print production with free tools

["Christoph Schäfer"]

Hi Alex,

>
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 10:25 AM, "Christoph Schäfer" wrote:
> 
> > The major problem with SwatchBooker is
> >
> > a) that it's no longer being actively developed;
> >
> > b) it doesn't run on Windows, despite the availability of a (presumably untested) "Windows version";
> >
> > c) the Mac OS X version is only available via Homebrew.
> 
> The script for Scribus is still available though.
> 
> > Moreover, Pantone as colour reference is crap, and their physical colour fans, chips, whatever, are
> > unreliable. It's a cleverly marketed franchise, which continues to hold the minds of designers captive,
> > thanks to their abiltiy to sneak into design education via licensing contracts with commercial software
> > vendors and thanks to the fact that design education lacks proper instructions in colour science.
> 
> Pantone is what people use and they will keep using it as long as this
> is what the market chooses. Whether you want Scribus to alienate
> itself from the market or not is up to you, of course.

People also eat junk food. Does that make it a healthy diet? Also, from my experience, people, including professionals, have no idea how to use Pantone (or HKS, or Toyo etc.) "correctly". (Actually, they can't be used correctly, because the physical colour references are unreliable.) For instance, most people seem to think that a certain colour code (e.g. Pantone 200*) will create the same colour across different media, when it absolutely doesn't. All those fixed colour systems, collections etc. are a relic of the time before colour managment. With colour management available, we only need fixed colour references for wall paints (so you can mix your own colours using such a reference), or a dental laboratory to identify the colour of your teeth, whereas in print and digital we do not need them anymore.

As for alienating Scribus from the market, we never had a licence to distribute Pantone palettes, and we'll probably never get one, so what are you trying to say here?

> 
> > The Libre Graphics world has a much better alternative in its hand, namely the Open Colour Systems
> > Collection (http://dtpstudio.de/downloads/OCSC_1_0.zip), which includes two colour palettes using the
> > CIELAB and CIEHLC colour models. Colour fans using this model for CMYK print are availabale for a
> > fraction of the costs of Pantone or any other vendor's references, and they're truly open:
> > http://dtpstudio.de/cielab/shop.php
> 
> You know, I contacted them in the past and asked some hard questions
> about some color science and technology related points they were
> making, how they wanted this to penetrate the market, what kind of
> standartization they had in mind etc. I never heard back from them. My
> takeaway from that is that they want to make a change, but only have a
> few vague ideas.

I will only answer the part on standardisation in public and reply to the rest privately. There's no need to standardise anything, because the colour fans are using an existing and open standard called CIELAB. Pantone, HKS, RAL and others distribute the digital versions of their colour palettes in that very same standard. The major difference is that they add their internal and proprietary numbering scheme and reduce the number of available colours. It's more than likely that Pantone's and other vendors' colours are included in the CIELAB and CIEHLC fans, but the numbers aren't there (only colour values). That's simply a result of physics.


Christoph